Horton

Re: Improve logical replication usability when tables lack primary keys

Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>

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From: Amit Kapila <amit.kapila16@gmail.com>
To: Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com>
Cc: Postgres hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Date: 2025-11-11T11:18:54Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers

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  1. Add the notion of REPLICA IDENTITY for a table.

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 1:36 PM Chao Li <li.evan.chao@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> * BACKGROUND
>
> This requirement comes from several users operating large deployments, particularly in HIS (Hospital Information Systems). The situation can be summarized as follows:
>
> - A central DB operations team maintains the main database and configures logical replication for all tables.
> - Multiple third-party application vendors are allowed to create new tables in that database.
> - Some of these newly created tables lack a primary key. Since logical replication with `REPLICATION IDENTITY DEFAULT` requires a primary key, such tables silently fail to replicate.
> - The DB operations team must then spend significant effort identifying the affected tables and correcting them manually.
>

Can you share an example of how we silently fail to replicate? Won't
in such cases UPDATE/DELETE will anyway raise an ERROR?

-- 
With Regards,
Amit Kapila.